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This study explores contradictions that emerge when utilizing a flipped classroom approach to university mathematics education. The work uses Activity Theory and its principle of dialectical contradiction as a theoretical framework to identify and analyse contradictions that arise in flipped mathematics classrooms for engineering students. Data were collected mainly by means of video recording of classroom activities and interviews with two cohorts of first-year engineering students in a Norwegian university over two years. An inductive approach to data analysis based on the interaction between the theoretical framework and the empirical data is used to provide evidence about the contradictions. The results show that contradictions manifest themselves as tensions in flipped mathematics classrooms. They emerge at different activity levels and affect student learning of mathematics. The aim of the study is to add to the lack of theoretical underpinning and limited research on tensions and contradictions in flipped mathematics classrooms at the university level.

Wikis have been recently promoted as tools that foster collaborative learning. However, there has been little research devoted to the criteria that are suitable to address issues pertinent to collaborative learning. This paper proposes a set of criteria to explore technical and pedagogical usability issues of collaborative learning with wikis. The criteria are then used to evaluate students' collaborative writing activities. The units of study are wikis that groups of students developed collaboratively using MediaWiki. This paper also reports on technical and pedagogical implications for the use of wikis as collaborative learning tools in teacher education.

Most software tools that have been developed with the aim of helping students to learn school algebra have not yet achieved successful results in classroom. Almost all of them are menu-based systems that provide transformation rules in menus and buttons. Aplusix is a new interactive software tool for learning school algebra. In contrast to existing software tools in mathematics education, Aplusix has been developed to allow students to freely build and transform algebraic expressions as they can do on paper. In addition, Aplusix provides appropriate feedback and interactivity, and as such, it becomes a source of learning. This work reports on a research project on the investigation of students' learning of elementary algebra with Aplusix. The work uses the Theory of Didactical Situations (TDS) to analyze and evaluate the learning potentialities of Aplusix. The paper also reports on implications for the learning of school algebra and the integration of Aplusix into mathematics classroom. (Contains 6 figures and 2 tables.)

Due to the new possibilities they open up for collaborative writing in education, wikis have received much attention the last few years. As a result, teachers have used wikis to achieve various educational purposes, such as wikis for online courses, teacher evaluation, or class project. However, the novelty and popularity of a technology do not automatically imply its suitability in educational settings. To evaluate the pedagogical effectiveness of wiki-based collaborative writing, there is a need for a theoretical framework that focuses on three essential elements of wikis and their relationships: technology, content, and group work. The framework was used to assess students' perceptions of wiki-based collaborative writing. Even though the results achieved so far are not as satisfactory as expected, the framework provides a promising way of looking at collaborative writing activities in a wiki-based environment. Based, on the results, the article reports on pedagogical implications of using wikis as collaborative writing tools in teacher education.

Web 2.0 technologies are becoming popular in teaching and learning environments. Among them several online collaborative writing tools, like wikis and blogs, have been integrated into educational settings. Research has been carried out on a wide range of subjects related to wikis, while other, comparable tools like Google Docs and EtherPad remain largely unexplored in the literature. This work presents a case study investigating education students' perceptions of collaborative writing using Google Docs and EtherPad. Both tools provide opportunity for multiple users to work on the same document simultaneously, have a separate space for written metacommunication, and are promoted by software designers to be fairly intuitive to adopt without prior training. The work investigates if perceptions depend on factors such as gender, age, digital competence, interest in digital tools, educational settings, and choice of writing tool, and examines if the tools are easy to use and effective in group work. This paper focuses on quantitative results of survey questionnaires. Further qualitative analysis will be presented in a later paper. The theoretical framework is drawn from two learning theories, the social-constructivist learning theory and the community of practice, and their relationships to collaborative tools. Related research literature is characterized by a number of issues: positive elements of use, advantages of using Web 2.0 technologies, critical issues regarding the pedagogical value of Web 2.0, and the role of the teacher in using these technologies. The case study participants were 201 education students who just began their four-year initial teacher education at two study programs with a total of six classes at the university Teacher Education Unit. They were assigned a collaborative writing task and asked to take an on-line survey on completion. When the survey closed, a total of 166 students (83.6%) had participated. The results were analyzed based on frequency distributions. The hypothesis that students with high digital competence and a positive attitude towards digital tools are more positive than average seems to be confirmed. Also gender does not play any particular role. As for younger students being more positive than older, the population of older students was so low that no conclusion can be drawn. The work does not validate that EtherPad users are more positive than Google Docs users, but this may be explained by EtherPad being unavailable for some time during the students' collaborative writing period. Furthermore only 13.9% of the students were motivated to use the tools for collaboration, and only a minority of the students (15.7%) reported that the quality of collaboration in the group increased with use of the tools. Likewise, the tools did not work as expected for a majority of the students (70.5%). Forty-seven percent of the students liked to comment and edit others contributions to group work. Although the results cannot be generalized to a larger group of students, and no definite conclusions can be drawn from the questionnaires about the usefulness and effectiveness of Google Docs and EtherPad for collaborative writing, the results cannot be underestimated since some results are consistent with the research literature. Future research consists of the qualitative evaluation of the students' comments to open ended-questions in the questionnaire, the students' collaborative essay papers, and their contributions to group work. It may also be important to examine the extent and quality of utilization of the tools for collaborative writing. Triangulation of the data collected may shed light on how they really perceived the effectiveness of Google Docs and EtherPad to support collaborative writing among students. (Contains 3 tables and 2 figures.)

Web-based learning resources (WBLRs) have provided teachers with a wide range of new teaching experiences that are not possible in traditional classroom. However, little research has been done as to which approach to WBLRs is suitable to address issues that are pertinent to learning. This paper proposes a conceptual framework to explore the design and evaluation of WBLRs in school education. The paper also examines the way in which the framework is used to evaluate students' and teachers' perceptions of WBLRs by means of survey questionnaires. Before developing the framework, a literature review is undertaken to report on the state of research in the field of WBLRs. The literature review reveals a lack of design and evaluation of WBLRs in educational settings. Then, the framework is developed in three steps. First, the concept of WBLR is defined as a learning object that exists at the intersection of content, pedagogy, and technology. Second, concepts of usability are analyzed, and a definition of technical and pedagogical usability is proposed. Technical usability is a self-evident requirement, but it is not sufficient for designing pedagogically usable WBLRs. The usability concept must be extended to capture issues that are fundamental to learning. Nevertheless, technical and pedagogical usability cannot be considered as separate, disjointed activities. Finally, the context of use and evaluation is specified. The context is the totality of relationships between students and surrounding elements within a teaching and learning situation. The WBLR can be considered as an element of the context, and as such, it becomes a source of learning, by means of interaction with the students. To investigate the value of the framework, a case study is undertaken in three classes. To this end, the framework was used to inform the study, and the findings of the study were mapped back onto the framework in order to identify additional features found in classroom settings and points in the conceptual framework that did not significantly impact the case study. The main factor that impacted the design and evaluation of WBLRs was the pedagogical usability. While students and teachers globally agreed about technical usability, the findings indicate that they differed in their perceptions of pedagogical usability. In addition, the conceptual framework and the findings of the case study differed to a certain degree regarding the connectedness of some pedagogical usability criteria. The findings also revealed the existence of cultural values connected to students' preferred choices. This factor has not been explicitly anticipated from the conceptual framework. The findings cannot be generalized due to the limited nature of the study. However, the article proposes elements of a future research work that should be taken forward to generate a more complete picture of usability issues and what constitutes WBLRs in school education. (Contains 5 tables and 2 figures.)

In contrast to software engineering, which relies on relatively well established development approaches, there is a lack of a proven methodology that guides Web engineers in building reliable and effective Web-based systems. Currently, Web engineering lacks process models, architectures, suitable techniques and methods, quality assurance, and a systematic approach to the development process. As a result, Web engineering is still struggling to establish itself as a reliable engineering discipline. The cost of poor reliability and effectiveness has serious consequences for the acceptability of the systems. One of the main reasons for the low acceptance of Web-based applications is the large gap between design models and the implementation model of the Web. It is therefore not surprising that Web engineering education still focuses on technologies, rather than on critical skills that facilitate engineers to solve real-world problems effectively. To meet the challenges of Web engineering, current education must be aligned with a pedagogical model capable of empowering and supporting the acquisition of critical skills. To do this, a new learning environment must be created that promotes change in both pedagogy and course material, in effect, altering the role of the teacher, the expectations for students, and many other educational aspects. This article describes a learner-centered pedagogical model rooted in the constructivist learning theory for teaching students the skills they need to construct Web-based applications more effectively and collaboratively. The model is iterative and encompasses two types of components: the learning management process and learning phases. The learning management process is concerned with monitoring learning activities, such as providing information, assessing project work, etc. The learning phases are an orderly set of interdependent activities moving from context analysis to the communication of learning results. The approach described in this paper is a result of 5 years of teaching Web engineering. The process of designing a pedagogical model can be characterized as an evolutionary process that progresses through a series of experimentations, evaluations, and redesigns. In evaluating the approach after many years of experience, the instructor can draw the following conclusions. First, applying the constructivist learning theory is clearly a challenge for instructors as it requires making a radical shift in their thinking in order to translate the philosophy of constructivism into practice. Second, it takes time and considerable effort to make significant pedagogical changes. Yet constructivism holds important lessons for how to design environments to support active learning. It gives teachers a framework for understanding students' needs and motivations. It helps teachers to expose students to many aspects of the subject matter that are of crucial importance for the profession of Web engineering. It allows focus on what really matters for students--the acquisition of critical skills, authentic tasks, motivational aspects, teamwork, collaboration and negotiation, reading and writing skills, formative assessment, and self-evaluation. (Contains 9 tables and 1 figure.)

During the past several years, there has been a growing demand for skilled software engineers, a demand that, unfortunately, has not been satisfied, resulting in a variety of problems for the discipline. This paper presents a new approach called learner-centered Web-based instruction in software engineering that can be used to educate skilled engineers. The approach is based on three ideas. First, software engineering education must become more realistic. Second, software engineering education has to move closer to the learner. Finally, it must take advantage of the Web since this technology has the power of being a unique tool for implementing change in education. This paper reports and discusses the results from the evaluation of the approach. Index Terms--Constructivism, learner-centered design, object-oriented software engineering, unified modeling language (UML), Web-based instruction.